Editorial: Despite National Trend, Public Transit Is Winning In Connecticut

Strap-hangers wait on the platform at Hartford's Union Station to board the train between New Haven and Hartford on CTrail's first day of Hartford Line service this past summer. (Brad Horrigan / Hartford Courant)

Buses struggle nationwide to compete for riders against cheap gas, cheap secondhand cars, Uber and Lyft services. Where are they winning the competition? In Connecticut.

Bus ridership was up 5.4 percent in Connecticut in the latest figures available from the American Public Transportation Association.

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Connecticut is bucking the nationwide trend here. Across the United States, bus ridership has been going down for years, says the Congressional Research Service.

So Connecticut is doing something right.

Younger Riders

What’s it doing right? For one thing, providing rides for college students.

The 913 Buckland-Storrs Express saw more than 115,000 riders in its first year. The new line takes students from UConn to Hartford via the Buckland-area malls and back again.

In 2016, the state had put off this bus service for a year because of the budget crisis. It’s clear now that there was pent-up demand for the service.

It helps, of course, that more than half of the passengers on the bus line take advantage of the U-Pass program. The U-Pass is a $20-per-semester train and bus pass for students at UConn, its branches, the state’s community colleges and two state universities, Central and Southern.

We agree with Sacred Heart University President John J. Petillo that the program ought to be open to students at private institutions as well.

A Rail Boost Too

The CTrail Hartford Line is also enjoying a good run.

The Hartford Line runs from New Haven to Hartford and up to Springfield. It had 69,000 passenger trips in its first six weeks this summer — more than double the ridership on what was formerly Amtrak-only service on the line.

Like the buses, the trains are running more often — more like a subway — and they’re newer and nicer. That makes them far more attractive to riders.

These are the kinds of investments that accelerate economic growth by better connecting towns, cities and riders, including students, to the larger region and providing better job access.

The Highway Subsidy

One reason public transit ridership may be slowing down nationwide is because more people own cars.

Low-income and immigrant populations whose only options used to be buses can now get cheap used cars on sites like Craigslist. They can also get subprime auto loans, which are growing rapidly. The number of registered vehicles has zoomed to 276 million, up 10 percent since 2012.

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Cars, however, spew pollutants, cause traffic jams and deaths, and cost taxpayers a lot more than many realize.

Much ado is made about bus and train subsidies, but road users are heavily subsidized by taxpayers too. “This subsidizing of car ownership costs the typical household about $1,100 per year — over and above the costs of gas taxes, tolls, and other user fees,” says the Atlantic magazine.

For those who gripe anyway that taxpayers shouldn’t spend so much on decent bus and train service, look at the big picture: The state’s bus system moves more than 40 million people a year, says the state Department of Transportation. Its rail system carries 38 million people. That’s a lot of traffic, pollution and possible accidents that are taken off the roadways thanks to public transit.